Open Source Hardware

The concept of Open Source Hardware is very much in tune with another concept – Open Source Software.
This is understandable, because it was the laurels of programmers who were interested in engineers and they decided to adapt this joint development technology to their tasks.
What is the secret of the commercial success of approaching the project using open licenses?
Various sources say that it was invented in Silicon Valley by hackers who do not want to put up with the profit of firms selling copies of the software product. In fact, these good guys only showed investors that a freebie is a way to attract a large number of enthusiasts. And it was people with money who came up with how to make profit out of it.
It turned out that you can earn on customization, i.e. Adoption of the kernel for an individual customer.
If you look at the processes taking place in business, it becomes obvious that the idea of ​​open source has penetrated everywhere, where the buyer does not want to pay a lot of money for copies. Perhaps the most revealing is the transition of mass popculture from the sale of records to the organization of concert tours.
If we go back to the OSC, then the most outstanding project, of course, is Linux. He, in fact, became the first bell, that the time of patents is over. Help and the Chinese. Showing complete indifference to international patent law and dumping prices are simply dashed by archaic patent owners.
Now it became clear that in order to be successful, we must act. You have to row with all your might, creating an altruistic wave from your product and only when thousands of grateful followers are rowing alongside you, you can afford to look back and see that multiplying altruistic force that is ready to go with you to success.
The success of Linux is eager to be repeated not only by other programmers, but also by engineers. Thus there was a new phenomenon Open Source Hardware.
Here are the famous projects that have united researchers for the sake of a great goal:

Despite the openness, the teams that follow this path set certain conditions, dictated by the following motives:
“So do not get yourself to anyone” – they want to have guarantees that their product will not be sold.
“Free – it means absolutely free” – part of the product can not be a component with a paid license, which turns the final product into a paid one.
But how then to earn? The bottom line is in what. The end product itself can be part of a commercial product.
To understand in all these casuistics to the final consumer does not make much sense; For him, the product will still be paid, but have certain advantages: most likely it will be cheaper and more exclusive.
To join groups of creators of the product with open source, interesting information tools have been created – repositories. The most famous of these is GitHub. This is a kind of social network of adjusters fighting bugs (errors in the code). As can be seen from the context, this service is made for programmers and it is the most convenient for them.
There are a number of attempts to create such a service for the designers of material products.

All of them are not much different from GitHub.
One of the problems is that compiler manufacturers have long provided free access to programmers for their offspring, and engineering software products are all very expensive. In addition, in the engineering world there are several giant firms that have actually split the engineering community into parties of fans of a particular product.
Another problem is that engineering is inherently very diverse. Each direction can claim volume and complexity in such a direction as programming. To make the same repository for all engineering directions at once is quite difficult, and its versatility narrows the possibilities and actually reduces it to a notebook.
In many respects the decisive factor in choosing a repository is the popularity of the service, and therefore the opportunity to attract more people to its product. Therefore, there are many attempts to use GitHub as a repository for Open Source Hardware.
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